e still
possessed the Heine letter he required; only it was in her father's
possession, and she had written to him to Russia to send it on. Her
silence had been due to pique at the condition Lassalle had attached
to acceptance of the mere friendship she offered him, to wit, that,
like all his friends, she must write him two letters to his one.
"Inconsiderate little creature!" he thought, smiling but half
resentful. But, though she had now only that interest for him which
the woman who has refused one never quite loses, she stirred again his
sense of the foolish emptiness of loveless life. His brilliant
reputation as scholar and orator and potential leader of men; his
personal fascination, woven of beauty, wit, elegance, and a halo of
conquest, that made him the lion of every social gathering, and his
little suppers to celebrities the talk of Berlin--what a hollow farce
it all was! And his thoughts flew not to Sophie but to the new
radiance that had flitted across his life. He called up the fading
image of the brilliant Helene von Doenniges whom he had met a year
before at the Hirsemenzels. He lived again through that wonderful
evening, that almost Southern episode of mutual love at first sight.

He saw himself holding the salon rapt with his wonderful conversation.
A silvery voice says suddenly, "No, I don't agree with you." He turns
his head in astonishment. O the _piquante_, golden-haired beauty,
adorably white and subtle, the dazzling shoulders, the coquettish play
of the _lorgnette_, the wit, the daring, the _diablerie_. "So it's a
no, a contradiction, the first word I hear of yours. So this is you.
Yes, yes, it is even thus I pictured you." She is rising to beg the
hostess to introduce them, but he places his hand gently on her arm.
"Why? We know each other. You know who I am, and you are Brunehild,
Adrienne Cardoville of the _Wandering Jew_, the gold chestnut hair
that Captain Korff has told me of, in a word--Helene!" The whole salon
regards them, but what are the others but the due audience to this
splendid couple taking the centre of the stage by the right divine of
a love too great for drawing-room conventions, calling almost for
orchestral accompaniment by friend Wagner! He talks no more save to
her, he sups at her side, he is in boyish ecstasies over her taste in
wines. And when, at four in the morning, he throws her mantle over her
shoulders and carries her down the three flights of stairs to her
carriage,